艾拉·惠勒·威尔科克斯传记

诗人的传记

艾拉·惠勒于1850年11月5日出生在威斯康辛州洛克县的约翰斯敦中心，她从小就是一个流行文学的狂热读者，尤其是E.D.E.N.索斯沃斯、玛丽·简·霍姆斯和维达的小说。14岁时，她第一次发表作品是向《纽约水星报》(New York Mercury)提交的一些素描。不久，她的诗出现在《韦弗利杂志》和《莱斯利周刊》上。除了在威斯康辛大学的一年(1867-68)，她此后一直致力于写作。惠勒的第一本书是一本节制诗集，于1872年出版，名为《水滴》(Drops of Water)。1873年出版了宗教和道德诗歌合集《贝壳》(Shells)， 1876年出版了感怀性很强的叙事诗《毛尿》(mauurine)。她的下一本书，一本爱情诗集，被一家芝加哥出版商以不道德为由拒绝出版，这确保了它在1883年由另一家出版商以《激情之诗》为名出版时的成功，这是一个令人兴奋的标题，与书中的任何内容一样性感。这本书在两年内卖出了6万册，奠定了惠勒的声誉。1884年，她嫁给了商人罗伯特·m·威尔科克斯。在使自己成为文学小圈子的中心的同时，威尔科克斯继续滔滔不绝地写出带有陈词滥调和轻松深刻的诗句。 They were collected in such volumes as Men, Women, and Emotions (1893), Poems of Pleasure (1888), Poems of Sentiment (1906), Gems (1912), and World Voices (1918). Wilcox also wrote much fiction, including Mal Moulée (1885), A Double Life (1890), Sweet Danger (1892), and A Woman of the World (1904); two autobiographies, The Story of a Literary Career (1905) and The Worlds and I (1918); and columns of prose and poetry for various newspapers and articles and essays for Cosmopolitan and other magazines. After her husband's death in 1916 Wilcox made her long-standing interest in spiritualism the subject of a series of columns as she sought--successfully, she claimed--to contact his spirit. At her husband's direction (she said), Wilcox undertook a lecture and poetry-reading tour of Allied army camps in France in 1918. She fell ill early in 1919 and died at her home in Short Beach, Connecticut, on October 30, 1919.